Jamal Greene, a professor at Columbia Law School, suggests that Vance’s post signals the government’s refusal to comply with court orders
“I think the tweet, taken on its own terms, is empty because it refers to the ‘legitimate powers’ of the executive. And the whole question in these cases is whether the executive is acting legitimately or not,” Greene told
NBC News.
“He has some cover in that sense,” Greene added, referring to Vance. “He hasn’t promised unlawful behavior.”
In the past, JD Vance argued that the president has the authority to directly oppose judicial decisions aimed at limiting White House power.
“When the courts stop you, stand before the country like [early US president] Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,’” Vance said during a 2021 podcast. He added that a future Trump administration should sack “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,”
BBC reported.
A number of senators and other politicians opposed Vance’s statement, reminding him that’s not how the law works.
